Oct 14, 2007 - Name of the indicator/method: Happy Life Years (HLY) ... believed to make for a better life, such as economic affluence, full employment and.
Contribution to Beyond GDP „Virtual Indicator Expo“ http://www.beyond-gdp.eu Name of the indicator/method: Happy Life Years (HLY) Summary prepared by: Ruut Veenhoven, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands Date: October 14th 2007
Need for a measure of quality of life in nations How to assess how well a nation is doing? One way is to look at the quality-of-life of the people who live there. This view is gaining prominence, both among policy makers and the general public. This begs the question what quality-of-life is precisely and how that can be measured comprehensively. Assumed quality-of-life Quality-of-life in nations is commonly measured by taking stock of conditions that are believed to make for a better life, such as economic affluence, full employment and education. Measures of such conditions are added in an index, like the Human Development Index (HDI) or the Index of Social Progress (ISP). Items in such indexes are typically things that are on the political agenda and as such these indexes inform about progress on the way chosen. Yet these indexes do not tell us whether we are on the right track, that is, whether these policy achievements really improved the lives of citizens. Still another problem is that such measures typically assume that more is better and do not inform us about an optimum, e.g. how many years of education is optimal for a good life. Apparent quality of life Another approach is to assess how well people thrive in a society. The focus is then on the outcomes of life, rather than on the preconditions. How well an organism thrives is typically reflected in its lifetime. In higher animals, thriving reflects also in affective experience and humans are moreover able to estimate how well they have felt over longer periods of time. These estimates of how we feel most of the time are at the basis of the appraisal of how happy we are. Hence in the case of humans, thriving reflects both in how long and how happy they live.
Measure of Happy Life Years 1
How can we assess how long and happy people live in a country? This can be done combining data on average happiness assessed in surveys of the general population with data on longevity taken from civil registration. Happiness Happiness is how much one likes the life one lives. Since this is something people have in mind, it can be measured using single direct questions. An example of a survey question on happiness is: Taking all together, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you currently with your life as a whole?
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Longevity How long people will live in a country can be estimated on the basis of longevity of people who have passed away. Statisticians call this life expectancy. Happy-Life-Years = Life-expectancy at birth x 0-1 happiness Suppose that life expectancy in a country is 60 years. If everybody were perfectly happy in that country (average score 10), people would live 60 Happy Life Years in that country. If the average score is 5 the number of Happy Life Years is obviously lower, in this case 60 x 0,5 = 30. If life expectancy is also 60 years but average happiness 8, the number of happy life years is 48 (60 x 0,8). Large differences in Happy Life Years across nations Theoretically, this indicator has a broad variation; HLY is zero if nobody can live in the country, and will be endless if society is ideal and its inhabitants immortal. The practical range is about 50 years, the highest number of Happy Life Years is observed in Switzerland (63.9) and the lowest in Zimbabwe (11.5). Happy Life Years in nations in the early 2000s
